Review: Vasoolraja MBBS
Baradwaj Rangan
Baradwaj Rangan
(C) The Economic Times, Madras Plus - August 19, 2004
In the first sequence of 'Munnabhai MBBS', there's a walker in a park
who takes to jogging when he senses there's an assassin behind him. He
approaches a taxi driver to help him escape, and they set off, but the
assassin catches up. The taxi is abandoned, the driver runs in one
direction, the jogger in another, the assassin in a third, and the
three frantically cross paths until they converge in a room where it's
revealed it was all a ploy to kidnap the jogger. The scene was some
five minutes of setup, leading to a comic payoff.
The remake 'Vasoolraja MBBS', on the other hand, is all payoff, no
setup. It gets straight to the room, to the kidnapping bit. It isn't
interested in replicating the preceding comic rhythms, or even in
being sensitive to its characters. (Remember how the cancer patient
merely looked on shyly, wonderingly, at the cabaret girl in the 'Dekh
Le' song sequence in the original? Here he simply jumps right into the
dancing.) All this movie wants to be is merely the latest entry in the
sub-genre of Tamil comedy called the Kamal-Crazy collaboration.
Kamal Haasan's impeccably-timed delivery of 'Crazy' Mohan's
impeccably-punned dialogue is usually reason enough to line up for
first-day-first-show tickets, but 'Vasoolraja MBBS' feels all wrong --
mainly because the material they've adapted isn't just a comedy.
'Munnabhai MBBS' was, above all, a wonderful piece of fairy-tale
whimsy (narrated by the ex-quadriplegic, at the end) that also
incidentally happened to be funny. Its story -- a middle-aged 'goonda'
joins medical college to become a doctor -- was actually quite
sentimental, about the need to put the 'care' in 'caregiving.'
These emotional portions are really hard to swallow here, especially
with 'Crazy' Mohan exploiting the hospital setting with stale jokes
that Surulirajan would have thought twice about using -- like the one
about a "body," referring to both a corpse and the female
undergarment. Director Saran doesn't appear too concerned about the
narrative elegance of the project he set out to remake. His approach
is simple: aim the camera at Kamal, and... do nothing. That's fine, so
long as the star gets good support from the 'Crazy' wordplay --
there's a very clever dig at 'Anbe Sivam', and who would have dreamed
that schlock-master Vittalacharya's cinema could be mined for a
profound-yet-amusing insight about life!
But the punchlines, mostly, aren't punchy enough. Bharadwaj's not-bad
tunes, mostly, aren't shot well enough. The cast, mostly, isn't
exploited enough. (Those who were hoping this would mark Prabhu's
return from Z-movie wilderness will have to wait some more; the actor
is capable of quality comedy, but the way he's [un]used here, as
Kamal's sidekick, is a total tragedy.) Only 'Kaka' Radhakrishnan,
shockingly emaciated, makes an impression, as a carrom-loving senior
citizen.
Sneha is referred to as 'Punnagai Ilavarasi' in the opening credits,
but even more impressive than her winning smile is the fact that she
resists stripping (rare for a Tamil film heroine) and smooching (rare
for a Kamal film heroine). As for the man himself, he doesn't have the
goofy innocence that Sanjay Dutt brought to the part, but no one else
can pull off a line like "naan dubbakooru" the way he does -- you
laugh at his choice of words, but he really makes you feel the sadness
beneath. He doesn't appear to have exerted himself a great deal here,
and that's perfectly okay. After all that sweat and blood he expended
on the magnificent 'Virumaandi', he surely deserved this break -- but
his fans surely deserved much better.